Oven Gloves for the Microwave
A friend brought these back from Hawaii.
Oven Gloves for the Microwave
They do actually help, and as there are two and they are small, they could fit anywhere on my work surface to move things that are either hot or in my case cold. Cold things like a pie from the freezer are just as painful.
Here’s one on my left hand.
A Glove on My Left Hand
Hopefully, they will help me use my left hand better, as often I use the right, as that works well with any normal temperature.
The fingers work as you can see, but the temperature sensors aren’t that reliable. Luckily, I haven’t burned the hand yet!
Range Rover Evoque
I went to a launch on the Range Rover Evoque at Earl’s Court last night. In some ways it was a bit of a waste on me, as I don’t drive, but a friend thought ashe might buy one, so she thought she’d take an engineer along.
I won’t comment too much about the vehicle, but I think it will sell well, especially if the 58 mph claimed for the diesel is obtained by real drivers. If I hadn’t had the stroke, I would probably have at least given one a test drive to replace my X-Type Jaguar estate. But it will never match the style and panache of my Lotus Elan.
What annoyed me was the presentation. It was all about style, with plenty of scantily-clad boys and girls, lots of lights and very little substance about the tjings that matter in a car. They didn’t even have any brochures!
Ten or so years ago, the lights would have caused me to have a headache and lose my vision. But since, I’ve been gluten-free that doesn’t happen anymore to me. So perhaps, it was a good test that my brain and eyes are working well in unison. But if I had needed to leave the presentation, it wasn’t obvious how I would have done it.
When I was shown the Discovery 2 or 3, it was an invite to a nice hotel and then I was given a map to take it for a drive. I didn’t buy one, but it was much more persuasive than a horde of scantily clad ladies.
New York Bans Smoking In Public Places
Where New York leads, the rest follow. Let’s hope London and the UK follows this one.
Three particular places, where people smoke annoy me; bus shelters, pavements where the space is limited and Greek restaurants. Last week I burned my arm on someone’s ciggy. I was just told rudely to mind what I’m doing, but it was either bump into the obese smoker or walk in the middle of a busy main road. Luckily he got my right arm, not my left.
Dalston Junction Gets a Step Nearer To Being Fully Open
I went past Dalston Junction station this morning and the Southern entrance can now be used by pedestrians. Not only does this give me a safer route to the trains, without fighting my way through all the obstructions on the Kingsland Road, but it’s a couple of minutes quicker.
The Almost Fully Open Southern Entrance at Dalston Junction Station
There is still a wire fence, but according to the staff, I sopke to, it will remain open.
It also means that if you want to change at Dalston Junction to or from a 76 or 149 bus say, then it is all very quick and easy, as there is a light-controlled crossing across the Kingsland Road.
All the station needs now is the opening of the bus stand in the station itself, the extension of the 488 route and another light-controlled crossing over Dalston Lane.
Incidentally, it has been announced that there will be more trains on the North and West London Lines. So a trip to Earl’s Court will be just one across platform change from Dalston Junction.
Botched Plastic Surgery Made Business Fail!
According to this story on the BBC, botched plastic surgery made a woman’s business fail! She even got £6 million damages for it.
Lucky her!
I can’t help feeling that she was more than a little lucky here, as it is in my view not the most sensible of things to have vanity plastic surgery. Why would anybody chose to go through pain for no proper reason? On the other hand read any tabloid and there are loads of stories where people have suffered pain in the name of pleasure!
I have pain from my stroke and to inflict it for a vanity reason just seems so bizarre.
As the courts have said that the plastic surgeon made a mistake, which he admitted, it seems that there were a both parties weren’t as sensible and thoughtful as they might have been! In all things to do with doctors, you should choose them with care!
One of the reasons, I would never have vanity plastic surgery is that there are so many court cases when it goes wrong. There has even been more than a few deaths, although thankfully most of the latter have been abroad or caused by plastic surgery performed in less-than-safe surroundings or countries.
So yet again, it is rich seam for the lawyers, to trouser a decent wage.
One of C’s legal colleagues once asked me if C had had her bust enhanced, as he thought it looked different. He was very surprised when I said it was exercise and a bra that fitted well. She never let him forget it!
A Year On
It is now over a year since I had the stroke in Hong Kong and as you know I’ve now moved to London, just round the corner from where my grandmother was born in the Balls Pond Road. In fact, I drink in the pub, where my great-grandfather might have wetted her head.
So how am I feeling?
Bodily, I have few issues.
My nails used to be firm and hard, but now they are soft and brittle. My toenails are actually worse than my fingers. My nails were always soft before I went gluten-free and I used to bite them badly and my skin too. I’m not biting them now at all.
Q 1. Could it be that as my body is repairing itself from the stroke, it’s using up what I need for healthy nails?
I have an almost cramp-like pain in my left lower leg, which is very like the pain I got, when I trod on a razor shell on the beach in Norfolk in the summer of 2009. It tends to get worse at night.
My left humerus is also painful a lot of the time at the same place where it was broken by a bully at school. I think as the nerves for my arm and hand pass close to the bone, it affects them at times.
I did have pain at the end of my spine, but now that has virtually gone unless I sit on the wrong sort of chair. This again was an old injury, which was very much aggravated by the hospital bed in Hong Kong. I should say that I always sleep face down because of the end of my spine, which curls outwards and I get less cramp in my lower leg, which I’ve always had since a child. I can still feel the cold lino, which I used to put my foot on to cure it.
It’s almost as if my old physical problems have come back!
Q. 2 Does your brain develop new pathways to get round the pain from injuries?
Q.3 When you have a stroke are these pathways knocked out? So if so, it would seem you need to develop them again. One psychologist at Cambridge, who worked with stroke patients thought this could be the case.
Facially, I haven’t too much pain, but my scalp and left hand side are rather tender. My skin actually feels like it did at times before I went on a gluten-free diet before I was diagnosed as a coeliac. One of my main symptoms of coeliac disease was chronic dandruff. It went immediately, I changed to a totally gluten-free diet.
In fact, at some times, I feel like I’ve been glutened. Not seriously, but my motions are rather loose nearly all the time. Full tests at Addenbrooke’s have shown that there is nothing serious there, although I haven’t had another endoscopy to see what my gut is like.
Q.4 Is this connected with any of the drugs I’m taking?
On advice from my previous GP, I do take calcium tablets with added vitamin D, as it was slightly low. But a Dexascan showed everything was fine.
I have just re-read a post on this blog, which was a pain diary, describing how I was trying to control the terrible pain I was having last summer, with codeine and paracetamol. It wasn’t that successful and a few days later or so, I collapsed and ended up in Addenbrooke’s. Nothing was done and I just struggled on. And then a few weeks later, I ended up having a fit like symptom, when I was putting on my coat. I can remember feeling a bolt of pain in my humerus and then I went into oscillation. It’s funny, but I may remember something similar happening, just after I broke the bone, as I walked home from school. Addenbrooke’s put me on Keppra to stop it happening again. It hasn’t.
Q.5 Should I keep taking the Keppra?
I incidentally take it with vitamin B6 to avoid any side effects, but also as I’ve been advised by a Dutch doctor to take B6 anyway, as he feels that coeliacs should take it to reduce the risk of strokes.
Because of the pain and because it felt like someone was pouring awful muck down my throat, I went to see an ENT specialist to see if my sinuses were bad.
He found everything clear, but thought that I was suffering from a serious pollen allergy. Now as a child, I was very sickly and was always off school. In my first year at Grammar School I virtually missed all the second term. Gradually it got better and it really improved when first we went to live on the 11th floor in the Barbican and later when I started flying aircraft for pleasure.
I’ve also had some bad winters and springs before, but not as bad as this one, when for much of the time, I just couldn’t breathe. Although in the last twenty years or so, I’ve lived on top of a hill with a strong westerly wind and my late wife and I could afford to take holidays in the sun in January. Funnily, my cardiologist,said that everybody should take two weeks in the sun every winter. I did try to do this in April by going to Greece and backpacking around the islands, but was irritated by everyone smoking all the time.
I know from travelling around the UK in the last year, that when I get out of the pollen I feel better. For instance, I went to Barnsley in March on a breezy day to see the football and felt a lot better that day. On the other hand, I walked past a tree-shredding machine at Euston a couple of weeks ago and it set me off coughing for half-an-hour.
Q.6 So why should all of this reaction to allergens get so much worse after the stroke?
On the other hand, in 2009, I was travelling to Holland a lot in the spring and suffered worse than I had done for years. I put it down to different pollens at different times. It was almost as if I got used to the English ones and then when I went to Holland, a load of different ones set me off.
Some days it’s so bad that all I can do is lie down indoors and listen to the radio. On the other hand, when I went down the London sewers, it helped my breathing immensely.
So how am I managing otherwise.
I have no problem getting around on buses and trains and of course by walking. I did fall over on a bad pavement in Upper Street in March, but haven’t hardly stumbled since, especially since I was fitted properly for a pair of trainers. I have no problems using the top decks of buses and climbing up and down ladders.
I like cooking and do quite a bit, although, as there are now so many Carluccio’s with a gluten-free menu, I am lazy quite a bit of the time.
I do eat a lot of soft comfort food, like bananas and ginger cake between meals. But my weight is still the same as it was five or six years ago.
My only problem with cooking is that my left hand diesn’t seem to like hot or cold, although the finger movement is now almost back to normal. I notice this most with my typing, where although I type mainly one-handed, I now use the left properly for the shift. Incidentally, I’ve always typed with my right hand, because of my bad left arm.
My eyesight to the left isn’t good, but in the last month or so, I’ve been able to play table tennis again, something that I couldn’t do a year ago. On the other hand, it does seem to be worst, when my eyes are streaming from the allergies.
On a mental state, what more is there to say, other than that I’m here. I made a good fist of a lecture at Liverpool University, so my brain can’t be that awry. Although, I do forget things on a short-term basis. But then I always have to a certain extent. But the long term memory is intact!
The Anonymous Widower 